Friday, February 21, 2014

BSNYC Friday No Quiz, And Instead A Half-Assed Product Test!

Yesterday afternoon I checked the weather, and holy fucking shit if it wasn't 40-something Degrees American!

I decided immediately to go for a ride, though I needed more of a pretext since I had actual important stuff to do (clean the toilet). So, since I'm still a semi-professional bike blogger, I decided to finally test the Fly6 camera they sent me:

In short, the Fly6 is a camera you mount on your seatpost in case someone decides to run you over from behind with a steamroller and you need evidence so the police can ignore it. (Assuming the Fly6 can survive being run over by a steamroller, which is still a big fat question mark.) I first mentioned the Fly6 almost two weeks ago, and since then the inventors have funded their Kickstarter almost twice over, during which time I was too lazy to set the thing up. Now, they probably don't even care what I think since they're on a private plane to the Caribbean, but I needed an excuse to ride, and so set it up I did.

Now, as you may know, there's a British Imperial Fucktonne of snow still on the ground around these parts, currently melting in that 48-degree heat. This means I don't go anywhere on a bike without fenders--real, full-coverage, struts-bolted-into-eyelets fenders. None of those strap-on roadie fenders, because strap-ons are for mild weather (and, occasionally "pegging.") Also, you need some fattish tires, because the streets look as though they've been carpet-bombed. How fat? Well, I use what once upon a time was called a "touring tire," even though the bike industry would have me astride a gravel-specific bicycle with gravel-specific tires, since they don't want you figuring out that what they're selling as a "gravel bike" is basically just a cyclocross bike with touring tires.

Fortunately, I have a bike set up specifically for winter riding, but unfortunately it has this old-fashioned thing called a "level top tube," (in addition to an extra-long, uncircumcised seat tube), which means there's precious little real estate in the seat-postular region, the upshot of which is that the Fly6 would not fit:

(Would not fit.)

This is to say nothing of the fact that, even if it did fit, I wouldn't be able to carry a saddle bag, and I'm sorry, but at my age you better believe I have no compunctions about riding around with a big, pendulous saddle bag.

(Another quirk of the Fly6 is that, somewhere in the literature I've now lost, I believe it says the camera don't work too great in the night time, which seems like an odd shortcoming for a light with a camera in it meant to protect you from reckless drivers. However, I should stress again that I've lost the literature and don't remember exactly what it says, and that I plan to try it at night and report back to you. Either way, this seems like it was designed mostly with people who ride sloping top tube bikes during the day, a.k.a. "Freds.")

Anyway, theoretically I could have engineered a "kludge," but my riding window was rapidly closing, and so I figured I'd just strap the thing onto the seat tube itself and hope for the best:

(That saddlebag is the "Grandpa in the Steamroom" model.)

Given its location behind the brake cable hanger and deep in the crotch of those "beefy" aluminum seat stays, I figured I had roughly a 20% chance of this thing yielding anything resembling usable footage:

(Do I care the cable hanger is a completely different blue from the frame? Not a goddamn micro-whit I don't.)

As it turned out, despite the sub-optimal positioning, you can actually see quite a bit. For example, here I am "rolling out" for what I call my "lunch ride," and you can see very clearly that I live in a rugged, urban neighborhood:

I love all the grit, it really feeds my soul. I only hope the hipsters don't come around here and gentrify it.*

*[If you have any comments about the slightly wonky cable hanger position, or about cantilever brake setup in general, please register them here. Or, better yet, here.]

Anyway, the Fly6 is not a tool meant to help you check the alignment of your cable hanger. Rather, it is a tool to capture on "film" that thrilling moment when a motorist runs over you from behind. Here I am at a red light (stopped, I might add, because it's a highway service road), and as you can see, had the Cadillac behind me run me over or even decided to throw diamond jewelry at me, I'd have had clear footage of the license plate:

However, the driver of the Cadillac didn't encroach on me or do anything untoward. Moreover, after watching the footage I looked up the license plate and didn't find so much as a parking ticket, and so I went ahead and blurred the license plate in the above picture by way of saying "Thank you for being a good citizen and neighbor."

Having survived a brush with the upper-middle class, I warmed up with a climb:

Note the condition of the road surface. This is not because of the weather. It's like this all the time:

I have heard it said that the community intentionally keeps the roads in a state of disrepair, since it discourages fast driving, interlopers, and, presumably, cyclists. I don't know if that's true, but either way I think it's fantastic, because riding over bumps is fun, and nothing ruins a ride for me like seeing other cyclists.

Whether the shitty road surface conspiracy is true or not, one thing's for certain: if the potholes don't get you, then the street toughs will:

Then, assuming you make it out of there alive, you cross the New York City limits and drop down onto the Yonkers waterfront, where you get to contend with potholes and steel plates and commercial traffic:

Here was the first instance where I hoped the camera would come through for me, because I kept passing and being passed by a driving instructor who was having an animated cellphone conversation while driving--which is illegal, even in Yonkers. Sure, he wasn't bothering me or anything, but I just wanted footage of the driving instructor talking on his cellphone, because I am a blogger who loves ironic juxtaposition like driving instructors talking on cellphones while driving:

Sadly, you can't tell he's on the phone. So, had I fallen prey to his Corolla, I guess I'd have enough evidence to track him down, though not enough to prove he was actually using his cellphone. (Sure, they could subpoena his cellphone records, but that will happen in New York State just as soon as Hell hosts the Winter Olympics.)

Still, even with the shitty placement, I wound up with clear footage of the traffic behind me, and had I been sideswiped I'd have had evidence of the offense:

Of course, I was not sideswiped, nor was I a victim of anything resembling motor-vehicular heedlessness or antagonism, and I can assure you I'm quite pleased I did not have to "test" the Fly6 under such circumstances.

One thing I will say though is that, if you're going to go all "Big Brother" while riding, it seems a shame not to have anything up front. For example, as I left Yonkers, I passed a runner who was so delighted to see another freak doing physical exercise in the snow that he waved joyously at me:

I've never had a runner wave to me while I was on a bike. The only thing they do is scowl at me because I "snuck up on them from behind." (In other words, they were running with headphones and got startled.) Therefore I'd have liked to have footage of a runner actually waving, but instead all I have is his back receding into the distance.

The apex of my "lunch ride" is what I call the "big climb." Well, it's not very big since it takes about four minutes to do, but it is very steep, and here I am cresting it:

The steepness thing is not subjective, either. I know it's steep because I've taken other people on it, and as we climbed it they corroborated this by saying "Yeah, sure, this is pretty steep, whatever" and then proceeded to ride effortlessly away from me.

After summiting the "big climb," I stopped to see whether the camera was still working (read: I barfed) at which point it captured the image of some asshole taking a picture of my bike:

And here's the very picture that very asshole took:

If that's not a trippy feedback loop of bike wankery I don't know what is.

By the way, you don't need a disembodied hand to hold your bike up when there's Four Fucking Feet of Snow everywhere:

They very easily could have moved up from Williamsburg, but when they did it looked like this:

After passing through Hastings I went up another hill:

And then back down into Yonkers. Did you know that New York City taxis get a second life as Yonkers taxis?

My theory is that after New York City taxi kills 10 people it gets sent up north to live out the rest of its life, which makes Yonkers like that island in "Papillon."

Next, I "portaged" my bike through a roadwork site:

I don't know what they're doing, but they've been at it for weeks, and it involves lots of backhoes and hoses:

My best guess is that they're administering the city a much-needed re-Yonkering.

While I didn't want anybody to run me over, my secret hope was that I would catch somebody on video mocking me from behind, ideally by giving me "the finger." I figured my best bet was the policeman directing traffic, since he gave me kind of a look when he let me though:

Sadly, he did not give me the finger, though he does look kind of nonplussed:

In retrospect, it's probably because he's been standing in the middle of a construction site all day, and my suspicion that I might have entered into his consciousness in any way only goes to show how vain and self-important I am.

Next I won the city line sprint against myself, and once again proved my Flandrianesque mettle on the forbidding streets of my gritty neighborhood:

Then some asshole turned off the Fly6:

By the way, if you want the full Strava route of my "lunch ride," you can find it here.

I had only looked at the thumbnail photo. Once I looked a the full-sized one, I saw that the mounting system is really long, though not as long as the Serfas Thunderbolt lights. Perhaps seatstay mounting is possible. If you had a proper gravel bike, I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem.

Seatstay's certainly possible but as far as getting footage the camera has to be perpendicular to the ground, otherwise I'd be filming the sky. They give you wedges to angle the thing but I don't know if any of them account for the angle of a seatstay. Will mess around with it some more.

I am almost wishing CJ would come along and sharpen his bikewankery claws on your cable hangers. Not being he, I can only observe that my fred bike teeny saddle bag has a convenient tag/strap/loop of fluorescent stuff on the back that I can slide the prong/tab/whatever of a rear light into if I ever go out in the dark. I have to say, of all the gizmos you have been mocking all these years, this seems like potentially the most useful. I must be getting old and paranoid.

There's no hook on this light, and in any case since it's a camera it has to be level and mounted to something solid, so sticking it on the bag wouldn't work.

I think the most sensible "kludge" would just be shimming the seatpost, which would bring the light out enough to clear the seat rail clamp bolt--though I still wouldn't be able to use my voluminous saddle bag, or really any saddle bag.

First 500! One of those would fit very nicely on my commuter - it being a little too small I naturally have a good amount of room on my seat post to mount stuff. Still need some good fenders. At least I can keep my "other" (read: newer model that promises to make you at least look like you can ride fast)road bike as Fred-tastic as possible.

Only hipsters care about every single god damned component, wire, nut and bolt to match one another in their over priced, "vintage" fixie.

Yeah, but I love you passionately, because FUCK yer funny... I LOL'd again and again, bless your heart. British Imperial Fucktonne... pendulous saddle bag - HA!! the grandpa in the steamroom model... still laughing. You rockadoodledoo, snobbers.

I love that we're still talking assholes. What a place this is...

Hey! Isn't hell hosting the winter Olympics as we speak? Oh, wait, that's hell next door where snipers are training their weapons on protesters.

Sigh... Sooner or later we're going to have to figure out how to build a few bridges before the whole planet looks like that, but first? Hockey. Let's hope the boys all play like Canadian girls!

I was axed to look at some bikes with a friend who desperately needed a cyclocross bike in his "stable."

It turns out, at some point in the last couple of years, a "cyclocross bike" has morphed into a road bike with a teeny-tiny bit of space all around for a 32c (no larger!!!) tire. Apparently you pay an extra CAD $2000 for mud clearance.

Yeah, sure, this is pretty steep, whatever" and then proceeded to ride effortlessly away from me.

butt alsothe problem with those cameras is if you use one every day and think their might be something worth viewing but you don't regularly review/edit/trash you end up with a whole bunch of 16 GB cards full of shit footage. Well at least I did.

I've got it: core-drill a narrow sliver out of the seat stay in the same diameter and at the same angle as a seat post. Weld or braze a 4" section of seat post into the hole. Voila, camera mounting bracket!

No wait, you need more side clearance to fit the light. So use a short, small-diameter tube to join the bracket to the side of the stay, so it stands out a bit. Then thread the 5/8" rectangular nut washer onto the post in the reverse impact flange and secure with 12.5mm perforated baffle grommet.

Some wooden blocks on the peddles would permit the seat post to be extended further to fit the camera mount. Or a smaller frame.Oh and the tonne be is the socialist metrical unit. The correct term is British Imperial Fuckcwt.

I wish to complain in the strongest possible terms about the proliferation of "Up-Stay" videos and "pegging" references in what used to be a family-friendly blog concerned chiefly with mocking bicycle riders who wear their sunglasses under their helmet straps.

Speaking of me, it has been several years since I have have taken several months off daily cyclebiking, and today was the second day of getting back out there. All I could think of when I started was Like a Virgin

I use a Topeak trunk bag around town (not on tour). I have straps too but I'm pretty sure the camera would bounce around a lot.

I emailed the Fly6 guy about mounting on the back of the rack where my rear light hangs out. I noted my use of the trunk bag around town and the fact that on vacation I have a mountain of crap like tents and stuff on a jandd rack that would block the camera. Apparently they hadn't thought about people who actually use their bikes for stuff other than just riding. They might consider this in the future. I wasn't inspired.

fhfr436

I don't see the problem. Just mount the camera upside down. If you are run down, just stand on your head during the court proceedings.

Very tempting for the commute, but f I got something like that, I'd have to teach my NOK how to retrieve the evidence in case of the "big one". Probably not worth it, since there are about 14 tools and appliances and an all too literal 40' boatload of electronics in the queue.

CommentatorBot9000 beat me to the punch. Looks like those street toughs are Mormons who left the bikes at the apartment. They must not be from Utah, Arizona, or Idaho because they'd be ripping up the snow on MBs.

If you can't mount the camera on the seat post, just hire someone to follow you in a car with a dash cam. That way you'll have the footage, and if you get struck from behind you'll know who did it and how much you paid them for it.

The last picture, of the arsehole turning off the camera, contains something deeply disturbing. To the left of the frame, right next to the frightfully coloured brakes, there appears some partially obscured upside down text in the snow.

It would appear to read; MintX.

Investigations have revealed that MintX is a brand of "rodent repellent trash bag". This, of course, would indicate the neighbourhood is an especially filthy shithole where rats and mice need to be repelled even when there's a metre of snow on the ground and where the trash is not collected anyway, it's just left on the street repelling rodents.

Disgusting.

And what sort of fucknut names a gabage bag MintX? "Repel your rodents with the sparkling fresh tang of MintX"

I enjoy these kind of blogulations. However, there is a dark side. Consider the car that you actually lease. Hard to find one without a British Imperial Fucktonne of electronics. It won't be long before what are now redonkulous accessories like electronic shifting, power meters, go-pros, etc are integrated into a mass produced Fred machine in the name of "safety". Healment sensors, 365 degree cameras, lights, my post has rambled on too long, sorry, you get the idea.

Snob - here in Euro Spondee land, there is nothing wrong with having front brakes on the right. I have had them switched by helpful mechanics on one of my bikes here in almost-Imperial-weight-land, so now I have to brake mindfully while I figure out which way round I am dealing with.

Babs - I was worried about bgw, until I saw that he was still lusting away on your blog...

a nearly 2 hour lunch? What the hell! I guess that is one of the benefits of "working" from home. I spent mine at a bar watching Canada beat team usa (again) in hockey. Oh well, we can't win them all. What the fuck is up with your cable hanger, have you given up on life completely?

I don't know Spokey, if you were just using the Peg-Cam for liability purposes in case of a rear ending then the ToPeakway bag would probably work. Mine is pretty snug and does not really swing around like so many swine nuts.

Sigh... Women with plump round anythings always despair at the thought of ever fitting into a size two dress. And hey! A two hour lunch is still considered a quickie in some places...

Thanks! I'd forgotten about the sticky keys thing. Whew. Only now that I think of it, BGW has been pretty quiet for a while, too. What do you think? Maybe we should plan a group grope, I mean ride over to Mt Tampon to see how things stand - once the good doctor returns from that hellishly hot land of ice and snow.

Dont sweat it Babs. A plump booty is a simple pleasure for all mankinds enjoyment in most every situation said booty is present. Our server had an amazing one this evening at the eats and babygirl said "Daddy did you see her butt?" I was pretty sure she had not busted me so I asked why she asked and she said "It's really round and stickin out." Yes. Yes it is.

It's sooo good to hear from you! Even though snob has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no God - despite all of the omniscient laughter ringing throughout the ages - my thoughts and prayers are with you that it gets easier soon, Leroy... xo xo

Rear mounted cameras depress me. The perspective it gives is of showing the physical world that the rider has just left behind and therefore only reminds me that one is one pedal stroke closer to death.

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About Me

While I love cycling and embrace it in all its forms, I'm also extremely critical. So I present to you my venting for your amusement and betterment. No offense meant to the critiqued. Always keep riding!